ir,
until his hoofs were scarcely more than a man's height above the rocky
bottom of the valley. In front, as far off as you could throw a stone,
was the cavern's mouth, with the three smoke-wreaths oozing out of it.
And what else did Bellerophon behold there?

There seemed to be a heap of strange and terrible creatures curled up
within the cavern. Their bodies lay so close together, that Bellerophon
could not distinguish them apart: but judging by their heads, one of
these creatures was a huge snake, the second a fierce lion, and the
third an ugly goat. The lion and the goat were asleep; the snake was
broad awake, and kept staring around him with a great pair of fiery
eyes. But--and this was the most wonderful part of the matter, the
three spires of smoke evidently issued from the nostrils of these three
heads! So strange was the spectacle, that, though Bellerophon had been
all along expecting it, the truth did not immediately occur to him, that
here was the terrible three-headed Chimaera. He had found out the
Chimaera's cavern. The snake, the lion, a and the goat, as he supposed
them to be, were not three separate creatures, but one monster!

The wicked, hateful thing! Slumbering as two-thirds of it were, it
still held, in its abominable claws, the remnant of an unfortunate
lamb--or possibly (but I hate to think so) it was a dear little boy--
which its three mouths had been gnawing before two of them fell asleep!

All at once, Bellerophon started as from a dream, and knew it to be the
Chimaera. Pegasus seemed to know it at the same instant, and sent forth
a neigh, that sounded like the call of a trumpet to battle. At this
sound the three heads reared themselves erect, and belched out great
flashes of flame. Before Bellerophon had time to consider what to do
next, the monster flung itself out of the cavern and sprung straight
towards him, with its immense claws extended and its snaky tail twisting
itself venomously behind. If Pegasus had not been as nimble as a bird,
both he and his rider would have been overthrown by the Chimaera's
headlong rush, and thus the battle have been ended before it was well
begun. But the winged horse was not to be caught so. In the twinkling
of an eye he was up aloft, half-way to the clouds, snorting with anger.
He shuddered, too, not with affright, but with utter disgust at the
loathsomeness of this poisonous thing with three heads.

The Chimaera, on the other hand, raised